Passing On
by Cyath
Summary: Fuyutsuki mourns the loss of someone important in his life...and it's not who you think it might be.


Passing On

Her grave was bare, nothing marking the cold grey stone jutting out from the ground save her name, chiseled letters rigid, hard and unyielding against the smooth surface of the concrete slab. There should be something else, he knew, besides the bouquet of flowers he had left the last time. Something else to show the world what a person she was, what a beautiful, intelligent, kind and caring woman. But there was nothing besides that one single stone, but countless others of the mass graveyard which stretched out to the horizon.

A bare, simple stone, epitaph engraved with mechanical precision, amdist a sea of others that bore not the slighest hint of originality. Exactly the sort of grave she would have hated. She would have liked a quotation, he knew, irreverent yet thoughtful - that was the sort of person she was. Marble, maybe, inlaid with onyx. People to come and visit. And flowers. Lots of flowers. At least he could do the last part for her. He laid the bouquet he had carried almost reverently on the cold stone.

He sighed once, suddenly feeling the weight of his years. Why was it returning here did that to him? he mused as he continued to regard her resting place silently. Because she was so young. Too young to have died, died like all the others who perished in the Second Impact. The mental picture he kept of her, still vivid despite the intervening years, showed a sprightly young woman, full of the promise of life. The cliche was true, this time; someone with their whole life ahead of them. Not this dark hunk of rock in the middle of nowhere.

There was no point in it, he told himself bitterly. He'd told himself that one too many times; ten, to be exact. Every single time he came here, it hit him like a shower of icy water, cold reality slamming itself hard against his ideals. She shouldn't be dead. But she was. The contradiction never ceased to amaze him; the incredible power of the human mind to defy reality.

Ikari Yui. His youngest, brightest student. She had bounced right into the lab on the very first day with a greeting for everyone and a smile and laugh for the world at large. Students after that had teased him mercilessly about the new girl who made the normally taciturn professor grin even a little, and he'd had to admit a bit of truth to their claims. She had been simply wonderful, always laughing, joking, or else studying with single-minded intensity that never ceased to astound him. What more could a teacher ask for? She had promise, poise, and the logic to back her wild theories up; she had literally held the entire class enraptured at times. Even if the proof had always sounded a tad fantastical.

Reality, his mind whispered back. There comes a time when we can't deny that any longer. Science, for all it's power, can't change the past. Science can't bring back memories beyond the faint twinge of bittersweet regret.

He found suddenly that he couldn't cry. That didn't surprise him in the least; he knew he had lost the ability long ago. But still, the stab of sharp despair, the regret that gushed out as if from a wound; those, those he could still feel, and that surprised him - the hurt should have faded by now. But he found that he could still remember. He could always remember.

She'd told him that once. It was during a private lab session that had slowly become a friendly chat; they'd had many of those. So very many, his mind told him. Too many. She had told him with that same mixture of frankness and humor that was so like her, reaching up to where he was sitting, her behind poised delicately on the table edge, and pushed his nose in. "Professor, you're too stuffy." she'd said, wrinkling her own pert nose. "You have to learn to relax." And then smiled, to take the sting away.

He'd told her gently that that was what countless people had already told him. Gently; that was when he first realized she was different. He'd never used gently before; it was always gruff, or stern, or scolding, maybe curt, or short. Never gently.

She had noticed. That was another thing about her. She would be the one to notice, his own special student, when no one else for years had. "That's an excuse, plain and simple. You should go out more, make some friends. You'd like it" she'd said with an air of decision. "It'd be good for you."

He stared, dumbfounded, at her, for seconds after that...and watched her dissolve into a heap of giggles. The smile had spread slowly across his face then, working it's way from a crooked line into a full-fledged grin, and before long, he was laughing along with her, revelling in the joy of the moment. It had been so very long since he'd done that; always the quinessential professor stuck in the mouldy old lab. Never had laughed.

He smiled sardonically at the stone again. Memories upon memories.

Things were never quite the same after that. They was a new quality to their everyday camaderie, something different that gave their walks through the campus gardens an altogether difference atmosphere. If she noticed, she didn't say a thing; maybe like him, she was reluctant to probe too deeply lest the very thing being searched for was lost. So days passed, the days progressing into weeks and flowing into months, and before he knew it, they were at the last stages of the theory, so deep into formulae and calculation that they'd stay virtually imprisoned in their workspaces for days.

It got so that they actually started visiting each other. Thankfully, she lived in an apartment, a small one she'd been able to find somewhere in Shinjuku, and more often than not, they'd find themselves talking deep into the night, calling in ramen while lost in the ramifications of scientific debate. And he'd loved every minute of it. Here was a student, in every sense of the word; one who studied...and did she. She was the only one who could actually argue with him past the first few sentences, the only one who understood his theories enough to formulate ones of her own, tossing them back at him and rallying gamely for another round of verbal battle. He suspected she was as glad as he had been, having a teacher who would go the extra mile, spend days searching for that elusive bit of information that was so very vital.

And the months had become years. Two, in fact; but it didn't matter. The theory was fleshed out, the mathematics done, and feasible, and Yui was basking in the glow of graduation with full honours. The only pall over this happy time had been Ikari Gendou, supposedly Yui's boyfriend. He'd met the man, once (he had to, his mind told him) and he didn't like him at all. Unkempt, with shifty eyes and nervous speech - exactly the kind of person Yui disliked.

His hand touched cold stone. Contradictions - life is full of them, isn't it? She wouldn't want to be here, now. But then she was. He almost smiled again.

He remembered the day, or rather, night, so clearly. He had thrown a party - the very thought still made him blush - of sorts, at his house, inviting the whole class. One or two had cast the odd glance or two his and Yui's way; after all, it was common knowledge that the professor had had his sudden change of heart since she had come onto the scene - and they surely couldn't have that kind of a relationship? But that had been far from his mind at that time. They had partied, and sang, and partied some more, and drank. It was, he admitted ruefully, the only time he'd ever gotten drunk in his life.

It had petered out, eventually, as all parties did, with the steady trickle of leaving visitors turning into a downpour, much like the one that had begun to rage outside. She couldn't leave, so the only option left was for her to stay over. She'd smiled when he'd shown her to her room, and had a bit of something more on her face when he'd told her about it's previous occupant. His dead wife.

It was then he realized that she'd never spent the night here before.

He traced the harsh white letters of her name idly. They were cool to his touch, and he let his hand roam about the stone, slide along the curved edge, in rememberance.

He hadn't wanted it. Maybe, on some subconscious level, he had, maybe, in some deep recess of his mind, there was the urge. But he didn't think so. The fact remained, however, that he had fallen into his bed the same way she had fallen into his life - with a mixture of cheerfullness, exuberance, and yes, still a little fear. For she was young, and what is youth but all these things?

Somehow, though, she had made it seem all the more real. It had been a short, but exhilarating, night, her young body pressing into his older one, both straining against each other with suppressed need. It had been wonderful. Fleeting sensations came back - her hand in the small of his back, her eyes, the smell of her hair. The gentle curves of her body, and most of all, the passionate fury of life.

Only cold stone remained now.

Like all things, it had ended. They have turned happy but somewhat ashamed faces to each other in the morning, and headed to the shower separately. He didn't ask about Gendou; she didn't tell him. And then it was business at usual, back to the world of academia, of papers and reports and graduation ceremonies. There was nothing changed, nothing expect the fact that the sneaked glances at her had become suddenly longer, more filled with emotion. He'd cried at her graduation as well, at the exuberant fling of her hat in the air. Two mere drops of moisture, but they meant a whole lot to him. He'd never done that before.

Neither had he expected their affair to continue. He put it down to whim, to fancy, until the day another storm brought her to the door of his home and had a very wet and bedraggled Yui drag him into the shower, and subsequently, bed. They never spoke, not when they found themselves in the same situation not a week from that date. It was enough for them to simply be. Of course, he had had his doubts; that he was the lecherous professor doing what he shouldn't, or that she, she...he didn't know. And he was sure she had hers. But it didn't matter. None of it did, somehow, when he was with her.

"Ikari Yui..." he let her name escape his lips, let it take on a tinge of his sorrow as he spoke it to the empty air. His most precious student. Suddenly the inadequacy of the grave seemed to scream at him, and he raised one hand only to let it settle back to it's former place on the stone. His fingers tightened in a half-clench, but he continued to stand, and remember.

Events had progressed, things had changed, and their dreams had acquired sudden substance. It was a tense time, with previously proven theories being disproved and unbelievable ones given credence, but he had gone through. Even her marriage didn't take him by surprise. In fact, all he could remember was crying, again, at the ceremony. Only this time there were no tears.

She had married Ikari Gendou. And perhaps that was were it had begun, really. For after that, events had taken on a slow but bizarre slide, the commonplace fading out of the picture to make way for the abnormal. Take SEELE's involvement in the program, for instance. One day they were desperate for a grant and the next, they had all the money in the world to play about with. He'd joined them - that was the next step, a staid old gentleman participating in affairs that became increasingly clandestine.

But what brought it home was her death.

Among the rapidly changing remains of his life, it was that that was the strangest of them all. One moment, she was smiling at him with her son (he'd never really thought her the maternal type) and the next she was gone to who-knows-where. A scientific experiment, they said, gone wrong. He knew the truth. It was buried somewhere in the massive monstrousity that was NERV, housed and nursed somewhere in the black thing that was Ikari Gendou's heart. He didn't deserve to hold her name. But, truth be told, it didn't matter in the least.

She was gone. That was the only thing. Somehow, somewhere along the line, among the lessons and the discussions and the walks and the little meetings at the school cafe, and the smiles and looks and papers and that one fateful night, she'd become the most precious thing in his life.

His hand touched cold reality once again.

And now she was gone.

Passing on, it was called. Death. It's true you don't realize the worth of something until the time it's not here - then it simply hurts all the more.

He left the bouquet of flowers and walked slowly away. He didn't look back either.

If you like my writing, you can check out my homepage at and/or my collection of sci-fi and fantasy short stories at dp/B078GMNL9B


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